Plane crash kills 4 from west suburbs

2 veteran fliers, St. Charles couple die in North Woods

Naperville neighbors Carl Price and Ed Vogler had flown together aboard huge American Airlines jetliners and on single-engine private planes.

So it wasn't unusual for the men to be in the cockpit together for a weekend flight from DuPage Airport in West Chicago to northern Wisconsin.

But after picking up two friends vacationing in Wisconsin's North Woods, the men were killed along with their passengers when the twin-engine Piper PA-31P Navajo crashed shortly after takeoff Sunday evening.

The plane, believed to have been piloted by Vogler, one of four chief pilots for American Airlines in Chicago, went down about a half-mile north of Lakeland Airport near Arbor Vitae, Wis., about 20 miles west of Eagle River. Witnesses described the fiery crash scene amid some pine trees as compact, as if the plane almost fell straight down.

Price, 64, and Vogler, 53, were killed along with Dr. Thomas "Tim" Lappin, 63, and his wife, Anne, 61, both of St. Charles.

Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived Monday to survey the accident site and start searching for a cause of the crash, a process that typically takes months.

Family members and fellow American Airlines pilots said the men had long enjoyed flying together.

"We're taking consolation that he was with one of his best friends, doing what he loved to do the most," said Price's daughter, Heidi, who traveled from her home near Des Moines to Naperville on Monday morning to help make funeral arrangements.

To say the two men in the cockpit of the eight-passenger plane were experienced pilots would be an understatement.

Vogler, whose duties included overseeing 1,800 American Airlines pilots based in Chicago, was a retired Air Force pilot with experience flying Boeing 767s on international routes.

Price, a retired chief pilot for the airline in Chicago, had flown C-130s during the Vietnam War and was still flying Boeing 727s for a Michigan-based charter company.

The Piper Navajo they were flying was partially owned by the Lappins, who hired pilots to fly them to their cabin near Boulder Junction, Wis., said Peter Lappin, a son.

Another pilot had flown his parents to the cabin about noon Friday, Peter Lappin said, adding that Price and his father had been friends since the early 1970s.

A friend and colleague said Vogler, who had been a chief pilot for American Airlines for about seven years, was rated to fly the twin-engine plane involved in the crash, but Price was not.

"Both pilots were very, very experienced pilots," said John Jirschele, American Airlines' base manager in Chicago. "Just about every pilot at American Airlines knows Carl Price's name, and in Chicago, everyone knew Ed Vogler."

Price retired from American Airlines in 1999 as a chief pilot when he reached 60, the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots. He had been named a chief pilot in Chicago in 1985 and was one of the airline's longest-serving pilots in the job.

Just prior to his retirement, Heidi Price said her father selected Vogler as his co-pilot for his final American Airlines flight, which was to his favorite landing spot, Jackson Hole, Wyo. She said the two men typically flew together about once a month.

Price is survived by his wife, son, daughter and five grandchildren, while Vogler leaves behind his wife and three daughters, according to an American Airlines spokeswoman. Peter Lappin said his parents had six children and 17 grandchildren.

Bob Kudwa, director of operations for American Airlines in Dallas, said Price and Vogler had worked as flight instructors for the airline and likely each had about 10,000 hours of flying experience.

"Ed and Carl both would not make the kind of mistakes that young pilots make," he said. "Those guys don't make those kinds of mistakes."

Price and Vogler joined a Naperville flying club three or four years ago. At the time, Vogler told the club's president he wanted to again experience a more intimate kind of flying than what he had done for his career at 30,000 feet.

"He told me that he joined so that he could see the trees again," said Mike Pastore, president of the Businessmen's Flying Club in Naperville. "He just loved to fly."

The weekend accident isn't the first time a chief pilot for American Airlines in Chicago has been killed in a plane crash.

Capt. Richard Buschmann, a 20-year veteran with the airline, was killed in June 1999 along with 10 others when the Super MD-80 aircraft he was flying crashed while trying to land during a violent thunderstorm over Little Rock, Ark.